Your Story: The Arms of Dunstable and The Legend of Dunne The Robber
In 1821 William Nicholls, a Dunstable painter and decorator, began to publish a series of stories under the title Dunno’s Originals. He also told his version of the Dunn story in verse and also had the Robber Dunn hiding in the woods, where:
His sword was long, his arm was strong,
He’d been in many a fray;
For some time the soldiers seemed powerless to stop him and when King Henry I demanded his capture:
They said he was some evil fiend,
Not man of mortal blood;
So once again:
KING HENRY said, Tis wonderful!
That from you he could flee;
But on this spot I’ll build a Town,
Which DUNSTAPLE shall be.
And once again – he ordered that his ring should be stapled to a post to tempt Dunn out into the open, and once again Dunn got safely away but this time the story ends with a betrayal and
The Staple and the Ring they found
Which Dunn had stole away;
The Town still bears them for its Arms
Unto this present day
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